


Language of Sense and Memory

by Wojelah



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-02 23:46:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5268425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wojelah/pseuds/Wojelah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The whole thing is damn confusing.  Which is only to be expected.  And he's always known he'd walk through fire if the Doctor asked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Language of Sense and Memory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trobadora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/gifts).



> “At grief so deep the tongue must wag in vain; the language of our sense and memory lacks the vocabulary of such pain.”   
> ― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

In the middle of his third century, he takes a job as a delivery boy. Intergalactic post official, actually, but the point is that it gives him every excuse to travel, plenty of excuses _not_ to hold still, and a definitive, critical reason to avoid Earth and its near environs. If he's not keeping busy, he'll go back. Jack's sufficiently self-aware to know that in this, at least, he's beginning to understand the Doctor.

He still has the hopper. Still keeps it in good working order, and still uses it on the odd occasion. Mostly to avoid a missed deadline, he'd swear to anyone listening, but also to know that he has a choice. That he can. That it's not all the slow path, not if he doesn't want it to be. 

He hasn't seen the Doctor in... it must be years, he thinks. It's already getting harder to distinguish, and that's both blessing and curse. He knows it's been years. Might be over a decade. Feels like moments. 

He thinks about him, though.

Jack's too honest with himself, at this point, to call it wishful thinking. It's more that he's new to the immortality circuit, and it throws him a new quirk more often than you'd think, and the Doctor's the only real example he's ever had.

Not that the example in question is always the route Jack chooses. He's past following blindly, at this point.

Or at least he'd thought so.

But there's a man in front of him, grey-haired and hoodie-clad, and Jack knows the eyes, even if the face is new. What's odd, though, is that the Doctor actually seems surprised.

"Captain," he says, and oh, Scottish this time, there's lovely. (And that's pure Ianto, and it hurts even now, but not as deeply, which is its own pain.) "I didn't feel you there."

"Oh, well, Doctor," he offers, and even if he could stop the grin, he wouldn't. He leans on the counter. "I'd be happy to remedy that. Hate to think I'm losing my touch."

His first Doctor would've skewered him. His second would've told him to stop. His third would've blushed. Any of the three might - eventually - have taken him up on the offer. This new Doctor... just smiles, and he looks tired. "Some other day, I think."

"Pity." It's then Jack notices the box. "But if you _didn't_ notice me, you're here for something less enjoyable than I usually offer my standard clientele." The Doctor actually pulls the box back, just a little. Jack doesn't miss it.   
"Unless you're having second thoughts."

At that, the Doctor does focus on him, and while Jack never can name what's in his face, much later he'll understand it. 

"Gimme a sec." A few commands later, the shop's lights are dimmed, the door's bolted, and he's leaning against the counter, fighting the urge to simply walk around the barrier and shake the Doctor into telling him what's going on. "So. You need a delivery?"

"I do." The Doctor shifts the box from hand to hand. "But it's not something I want to ask of you."

That shouldn't sting. "Doctor -"

"I don't _want_ to, is what I said, Jack. I shouldn't have to ask it of you. But I will."

"Okay. At a bit of a loss here."

The Doctor does smile at that. "I wouldn't want to think I'm losing _my_ touch." Jack watches the decision settle in. A few moments later, the box is on the counter, a name and address scribbled beside it, and a promise made to deliver payment. Normally, Jack would raise an eyebrow at that - and he does offer service free of charge, with as lewd a wink as he can manage - but he knows that look, even if he doesn't know the face. So Jack agrees, and takes custody of the package, and the Doctor's gone.

The whole thing is damn confusing. Which is only to be expected. And he's always known he'd walk through fire if the Doctor asked.

\---

Three days later, Jack delivers a box to a Scotswoman with a brilliant smile and eyes full of stars and murder, and everything makes horrible, terrible sense.

"Oh my," the Master - _Missy_ he supposes, given the name that went with the address - "did he send you to me as a pet? Again?"

At least, Jack thinks, his mind ringing with red light and chains and the constant, deafening white noise of rebirth after rebirth, at least I don't have to pretend I don't know who this is. Aloud, he says only, "Sorry, gone feral. Not accepting new owners."

"But pigeon," she purrs, reaching to put a hand over his heart. "You've only ever had one. I was just dog-sitting."

He doesn't flinch, not even as she leans in close. "Terrible service. I'll have to leave a review."

She steps back, and he tries not to breathe in too deeply. He knows she sees his relief. They spent a lot of time together on the Valiant, after all. And torture, he thinks, is its own intimacy. "Well," Missy allows, her smile sharp with memory. "I always was a cat person."

"Remind me to warn the cats." He steps back, away, steeling himself to turn his back in contravention of every instinct. "Mission accomplished. If you have future needs, please don't call us." 

"Don't you want to see what it is, darling?" 

And the thing is, he does. He does. He needs to know why him, why here, why this. What it could be that would drive the Doctor to ask this of him. He needs to know more than he needs to run, even more than he needs to leap forward and wrap his hands around her throat. He lifts an eyebrow, and even that, it seems, is enough - too much - weakness to show. The curve of her lips deepens, and he feels his hands fisting.

She opens it delicately, slowly, and he can remember other delicate, slow movements, from a slim man with the same smile, a smile like a knife. He remembers reviving to that smile. He _remembers,_ damn it, damn _you_ Doctor. She takes her time, and the small, bronze disc is almost anticlimactic, when it appears. Or it would be, but Jack is watching that face very, very closely, and he sees the fear that turns it white, ever so briefly, before she masks it.

"Oh Fido," she says sweetly. "He's had you deliver his will."

And that's it. She steps back, the door shuts, and she's gone.

\---

He doesn't let the Doctor deliver payment.

He closes the shop. He uses the hopper. He _disappears_ , or tries to.

When the hand closes on his shoulder, he knows whose it is. He knows that touch. "Not dead, then," he bites off, not turning round.

"Should I be?" 

It's the wrong voice. The face that looks back at him is young and brown-haired over a bow tie Jack's mocked a hundred times. It's too much, and it's not fair, meeting out of order this time around. He can't handle the niceties of syncing diaries. Not now.

"Did you ever wonder what it was like during that year on the Valiant, Doctor?"

The smile fades. "Jack," the Doctor says, not Scottish at all.

"No, Doctor. Answer the question."

Those eyes never leave his. "No."

"No." It's like a gut punch. He has to look down, look away. He needs to leave, but there's still a hand on his shoulder, and now it's gripping tight.

"No. I never wondered, Jack."

"We were on the same damn ship, Doctor. You never -"

"I always knew, Jack. I didn't have to wonder." Jack's ears are full of engine noise, the constant thrum that never stopped, never faltered, not for an entire year. He can barely hear the Doctor over the memory of sound. "He always let me know your daily progress."

"Why, then," he manages, and only just remembers timelines and timing and paradoxes. 

"Why?"

"Doctor," he says, rising fast, "if, for once in your many lives, you want to be wise, you'll let me go. You'll let me go right now."

The Doctor lets him go.

\---

He hops again, and again, and again, until he has to stop on a park bench in Fergystlian, year umlaut 47, with his head between his knees, letting the travel sickness pass. The air, at least, is sweet and cold, fresh off the freshwater sea. 

A body settles next to him on the bench. He recognizes the fabric. And he waits.

"No," says the Doctor, and the brogue is back. "I'm not dead."

"But you sent me to deliver your will."

"I did."

"To the Master."

"The Mistress, I suppose." Jack stirs, and the Doctor says, "Yes."

Jack says nothing.

“Why?”

“Because she had to think it was real.”

Rage fires. Red. Always red. But he remembers, briefly, the Doctor’s face in the shop. And on the Valiant. And in front of a pyre. He swallows. “Was it?”

“Oh yes.”

 _And you gave it to her?_ he wants to shout. _To that lunatic, that madwoman, the one who spent a year tearing me to pieces, hunting Martha, turning the Earth you love to slag? When you thought death was around the next corner?_ He says nothing, just sits up and watches the wind whip the water.

“She had to know I’d say goodbye.”

“Funny,” he manages. “I don’t remember that.”

“That dial wasn’t the gift, Jack[.]” The Doctor sounds very tired. “It’s nothing but a burden. And I won’t deny it’s hers to have.”

Jack says nothing. He’s still seeing red, but it’s the pyre, not the engine room, and it’s full of a grief he hadn’t understood then and still doesn’t, even if three centuries have given it better scope. 

The wind gusts. Eventually the Doctor says, “I trusted you to take it from me. And to get it where it needed to be.”

“Even there,” Jack says.

“Even there.”

Jack feels something inside him relax, unbend, and he leans, just a little. The Doctor leans back, just a little. And the wind ruffles the waves as they sit, and watch, and stay silent.


End file.
